Water for Rural Production in NSW: Grand Designs and Changing Realities
Total Page：16
File Type：pdf, Size：1020Kb
NSW PARLIAMENTARY LIBRARY RESEARCH SERVICE Water for Rural Production in NSW: Grand Designs and Changing Realities by John Wilkinson Briefing Paper No 26/97 Water for Rural Production in NSW: Grand Designs and Changing Realities by John Wilkinson NSW PARLIAMENTARY LIBRARY RESEARCH SERVICE Dr David Clune (9230 2484), Manager Dr Gareth Griffith (9230 2356) Senior Research Officer, Politics and Government / Law Ms Honor Figgis (9230 2768) Research Officer, Law Ms Rachel Simpson (9230 3085) Research Officer, Law Mr Stewart Smith (9230 2798) Research Officer, Environment Ms Marie Swain (9230 2003) Research Officer, Law/Social Issues Mr John Wilkinson (9230 2006) Research Officer, Economics ISSN 1325-5142 ISBN 0 7313 1604 5 © 1997 Except to the extent of the uses permitted under the Copyright Act 1968, no part of this document may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means including information storage and retrieval systems, without the prior written consent from the Librarian, New South Wales Parliamentary Library, other than by Members of the New South Wales Parliament in the course of their official duties. Should Members or their staff require further information about this publication please contact the author. Information about Research Publications can be found on the Internet at: http://www.parliament.nsw.gov.au/gi/library/publicn.html December 1997 Briefing Paper is published by the NSW Parliamentary Library CONTENTS EXECUTIVE SUMMARY 1 INTRODUCTION ..............................................1 2 EMERGENCE OF ORGANISED WATER PROVISION FOR RURAL PRODUCTION ............................................................1 3 INAUGURATION OF ORGANISED PROVISION OF WATER FOR RURAL PRODUCTION IN NEW SOUTH WALES ...........................8 4 NSW IRRIGATION THROUGH THE 1920s DECADE OF NATIONAL DEVELOPMENT AND THE 1930s DECADE OF COLLAPSE ..........13 5 EARLY INAUGURATION OF PRIVATE IRRIGATION SCHEMES IN NEW SOUTH WALES: INITIAL RETREAT FROM GOVERNMENT CONTROL OF IRRIGATION ...........................................................17 6 NSW COMBINED IRRIGATION INITIATIVES WITH VICTORIA AND SOUTH AUSTRALIA: THE MURRAY RIVER SCHEME .............19 7 ALTERNATIVE ARRANGEMENTS FOR NSW UTILISATION OF WATER FROM THE MURRAY RIVER, AND FROM THE MURRUMBIDGEE ...20 8 EARLY PROGRESS AND EARLY PROBLEMS IN THE NSW IRRIGATION AREAS .....................................................22 9 CONTINUATION OF NATIONAL DEVELOPMENT: SNOWY MOUNTAINS SCHEME 1940s-1970s .............................26 10 FURTHER WITHDRAWAL FROM GOVERNMENT CONTROL OF IRRIGATION, AND ABANDONMENT OF PEOPLING THE INTERIOR: 1940s-1960s .................................................29 11 FLUCTUATING FORTUNES OF IRRIGATED COMMODITIES AND THE IMPACT ON GOVERNMENT POLICY TOWARD IRRIGATION: 1940s-early 1970s .......................................................32 12 THE CHANGED DIRECTION IN PROVISION OF WATER FOR RURAL PRODUCTION: 1970s-1990s ..............................36 13 CONCLUSION ...............................................55 Water for Rural Production in NSW EXECUTIVE SUMMARY C Water for rural production in New South Wales on a large-scale, through irrigation, was first undertaken by government (pp.8-12, 15-17, 19-22, 26-30, 35-36). C Government administration of irrigation was originally allied to a policy of populating the interior of New South Wales (pp. 8-9, 13, 27). C Fruit growing, and later rice growing, on small holdings were part of the envisaged means of peopling the interior (pp. 11, 23). C California was a particular point of reference (pp. 2, 5-8, 10-12, 23). C A limited government endorsement of private irrigation occurred during the 1920s and 1930s (pp. 17-19). C Cautions were expressed, not long after large-scale irrigation was commenced, regarding the worth of attempting to farm in the arid zones of Australia (pp. 24-25). C Cautions have been continuously expressed about the possible adverse environmental effects of large-scale irrigation (pp. 25, 52-55). C Peopling the interior, as a policy, was gradually abandoned during the 1950s and 1960s (p.31). C Governments gave greater endorsement, during the late 1940s, to private involvement in irrigation as government began to subsequently reconsider, and withdraw from sponsoring large-scale irrigation (pp. 30-31). C Government control, over the provision of water for rural production, also began to change as fruit growing, and rice growing, on smallholdings began to decline, and cotton growing on large holdings began to increase (pp. 32, 34-35, 37-45, 48-52). ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS I would like to thank Warren Musgrave, Tony McGlynn and Robert Towne for their assistance with this paper. All responsibility for content, however, remains with the author and with the Library. Water for Rural Production in NSW 1 1 INTRODUCTION Water for rural production has been one of the major issues in NSW economic development. In the early years of this century, water supplied by irrigation was looked upon as a potential major stimulus of rural production and, in turn, a major element in drawing more people to the inland parts of the state. Recently, irrigation has come to be challenged, both in terms of the proportion of the state’s resources which it consumes, and in regard to its possible adverse effects on the environment. This briefing notes looks at the origins, and development, of the policy behind irrigation and subsequently examines the changes in that policy (and the reasons for those changes) in recent times. Finally it looks at some of the criticisms of irrigation which have been made during the 1990s. 2 EMERGENCE OF ORGANISED WATER PROVISION FOR RURAL PRODUCTION (a) Onset of Efforts to Enhance the Water Supplies of NSW In the mid to late 1800s certain types of smaller scale irrigation had been undertaken by those who had taken up land in New South Wales. William Barwick has written that, “As early as 1843 much of the land along the Murrumbidgee had been assumed by settlers who used the water for grazing stock”.1 One of the most prominent of these woolgrowers was Samuel McCaughey, who had left Northern Ireland in 1856 and, in 1860, had purchased the property “Coonong”, situated along the Murrumbidgee.2 Irrigation, on properties in south-western NSW, was partly initiated by McCaughey. According to Barwick, “little application of water to land was made until 1860 when Samuel McCaughey constructed a cutting from the Murrumbidgee to the dry bed of the Yanco creek, which enabled him to irrigate. .’Coonong’”. By the end of the 1800s, McCaughey had become of the wealthiest woolgrowers in New South Wales and had built about 60 miles of irrigation channels on his properties.3 It was in response to severe drought in New South Wales, in the early 1880s, that policy makers in New South Wales embarked on taking decided steps to develop the provision of water in the colony. In 1885 a royal commission, chaired by William Lyne, member of the Legislative Assembly, was established in NSW to study the conservation of water. The 1 William Barwick, The Murrumbidgee Irrigation Areas: A History of Irrigation Development in New South Wales from 1884, with Special Emphasis on the Murrumbidgee Irrigation Area from 1906-1916 (B.Litt., University of New England, 1979), p.1. 2 ibid., p.2. 3 Trevor Langford-Smith, “Murrumbidgee Irrigation Development: A Study of Irrigation Planning, Establishment and Growth” in Trevor Langford-Smith and John Rutherford, Water and Land: Two Cases in Irrigation (Australian National University Press, Canberra, 1966), p.27. 2 Water for Rural Production in NSW commission’s terms of reference were to make a “full inquiry into the best method of conserving the rainfall. .and also into the practicability, by a general system of water conservation and distribution, of averting the disastrous consequences of the periodical droughts to which the colony is from time to time subject”.4 (b) The Influence of Irrigation in California in the late 1800s Although it was not until the early 1900s that there occurred, in New South Wales, a concerted effort to enhance the state’s water supplies, developments overseas intensified the endeavours of politicians to increase the availability of water in the then British colonies on Australian soil. In particular it was events in southern California which most attracted the attention of policy makers in Britain’s Australian colonies. A politician who had taken a particular interest in water supply, in California, was Alfred Deakin, former Minister for Water Supply in the Victorian government during the years 1883-1886, and chairman of the royal commission on water supply which was conducted in Victoria during the mid-1880s (and later to become Prime Minister of Australia). In a memorandum, prepared for the members of the Victorian royal commission, entitled Irrigation in Western America, Deakin had highlighted California as a focus for Australian endeavours to enhance the supply of water for rural production. He wrote that, “The climate of California resembles ours as much as that. .the rainfall of its warmer districts is insufficient or irregular, so that, in more than two-thirds of this state, artificial additions to it are rendered necessary. It is thither therefore that we should. .look to learn. .the modes of successful irrigation.”5 Deakin’s report was referred to extensively by the commission, which also considered the progress of irrigation in other western states of the USA. Deakin’s observations were used, in the commission’s report, to highlight the two river